Hi all - I posted an overview of some of the books I've collected on textile, pattern, and surface design on my art blog. I still haven't found an ideal blogging format or a way to reach out to all my audiences - I miss blogging here, and maybe I'll revisit my decision to stop posting here. But meanwhile, if you love books about textile and pattern design, take a look. I'll tackle my books on quilting, sewing, embroidery, paper arts in forthcoming posts.
Looking for new posts? I don't foresee new posts on this blog right now, other than a possible wrap-up/farewell thoughts post, but the archives will remain up. For current posts and information, please visit my professional communications/writing/editing site and my evolving elainelipsonart.com for painting and textiles. I invite you to like my Facebook Slow Cloth page as well. If you've enjoyed this blog, let me know what you've found most interesting in the comments or by email. Thank you all, enormously.
Merry Christmas, everyone, and thanks for visiting occasionally even though there's been no posting to speak of. We had a rare new Christmas snowfall to wake up to, and it's a beautiful and peaceful day. I made my customary annual donation of a "symbolic" sewing machine to Women for Women International, to help survivors of war, in honor of all my textilian friends. I think 2013 will be rocking and rolling, full of changes seen and unforeseen. Stay centered, stay tuned!
Hi! I know, I haven't blogged in... well, nine months. How's 2012 treating you? My year has been pretty strange. After three years, I left my job in June (and it was pretty all-consuming up until then) and have been doing some freelance and consulting work and trying to determine the next mission, adventure, experience, direction, and how and where to make a living. It was a summer of heat and fires and drought here, and autumn is a lovely relief (albeit a temporary one, if the climate change scientists are correct).
I did just have a beautiful nine days in Washington, DC, where I gave a presentation on Slow Cloth at the Textile Society symposium. I've put the talk and slides into PDF form and you are welcome to download it and share it. The file is about 4.5 MB.
Download SlowClothTalkSept2012
Meanwhile, obviously, I have not successfully rebooted this blog on WordPress yet. I still hope to do that but right now I'm evaluating everything and will need to let some things go or transform them into what works now.
Enjoy the PDF. As you'll see, over the past few years many wonderful people have given me permission to use their images as examples of the spirit of Slow Cloth, and I'm very grateful. I welcome and appreciate your feedback.
a detail of one of my vision boards - the quote and pictures came from pages in O magazine, I believe.
I don't know where I'm going
My cup is overflowing
The world is slowly spinning
No losing and no winning
The road is never ending
My compass point is bending
My compass point is bending.
-- lowen & navarro, Compass Point
No day without struggle, no day without love.
-- anonymous
There'll be one child born in a world to carry on.
- laura nyro
Oh, 2011. You really were perplexing. Along with your sternness you gave me some marvelous gifts, some signposts, and some lovely people in my world. You expanded my trust in the people around me while you annihilated any remaining shreds of confidence I once may have had in institutionalized leadership, profit-driven media, and corporate overlords of every stripe. You confirmed my appreciation for beauty, truth, and integrity in the world, for the dreamers, Occupiers, visionaries, poets, renegades, iconoclasts, builders, makers, artists, and farmers; and you amplified my intense dislike of liars, thieves, narcissists, fame whores, greedy manipulators, and perpetrators of violence and bigotry, all of whom have far too much power in our culture.
You left me hungry for vision, meaning, authenticity, cohesion, always for greater love, and for ways to contribute more to a troubled world.
You made me laugh a thousand times, and you made my heart hurt at least as often. You left me outraged and disappointed, and then you renewed and surprised me with some generous human act or beautiful creation or kind words or vivid imagining. You worried me with your sweeping omens about the destruction of nature and the prominence of plastics and poisons. You graced me with art and song and friendship and the absolute pure wonderfulness and hope embodied in my nieces and nephews and my friends' children. You showed me that even in the day-to-day blunt edges of a job that by and large leaves me frustrated and unfulfilled, I can find connections to extraordinary people who are a true pleasure to know and to sit next to every day as we do the best we can.
You humbled me with reminders that aging and life happen while you're making other plans. Sometimes it really is too late; opportunities are missed and wrong decisions made out of fear or some other demon, and you don't see it clearly enough until you've traveled some distance and there's no going back. You told me to keep on, look forward, and keep on again, to accept that the narrative of my life never had a chance of being conventional or predictable, and that comparing myself to others--especially the version of others that I see on Facebook or in marketing materials (and by that I mean many things, since almost everything in our culture has become a vehicle for self-promotion or selling something)--is a direct path to misery and self-loathing.
You reminded me that life is rarely fair. While some of my friends knew great good fortune, some of the most deserving and talented people I know faced true hardship and sorrow this year. You demonstrated again and again that the measure of a human being is never anything that can be tallied on a resume or a bank statement or by a search-engine-optimized social media strategy.
You warned me to draw some lines in the sand and find focus; you can't do everything, you said, and expect any of it to work. And indeed, there were days when I felt like a failure at everything, and others when I glimpsed the holy grail of joy. Choose what matters for the year to come, you said. Hang on to everything you love and let go of the rest. Let go, let go. That's the rhythm for this fancy footwork in the dance we call life.
So, 2011, there was beauty, there was drudgery, there was patience, there was good fortune, there were struggles, there was fatigue, there was healing, and then there was Paris. In the end you were gentler with me than with many people, and I hope I learned my lessons well. The best is yet to come, I'm sure of it.
I didn't blog a lot this year, but some of my bests did make it to the blog already, so I'll try not to repeat too much. My favorites in no way come out of anything like a comprehensive sample; I read about 1/100 of the books I'd have liked to read, and the same with music and movies. But here are some things that stood out for me this year.
Best thing ever over the airwaves: The series finale of my beloved Friday Night Lights. If you have a soul, get the DVDs and watch this show. Stop worrying that somebody might think you're a football-lovin' person (or a television-watchin' person). All those things I'm hungry for, and maybe you are too? They're in this show, y'all. And Coach Taylor is the magical antidote to all that revolting, sickening news about Jerry Sandusky and his ilk. Dillon, Texas. Forever. And also: Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
Best movie: I'm not much of a movie-goer, so I'm always a few years behind by the time I rent something I want to watch. Cave of Forgotten Dreams was the favorite of what I did see, and I loved Midnight in Paris, but mostly for Paris; I've never entirely forgiven Woody Allen, not that he would care.
Best fiction book: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
Best nonfiction book: This one is tougher. I think Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget is an extremely important book (published in 2010), though it's hard to know how best to act on the insights it offers (other than to never do crowdsourcing). On the spiritual side, I am deeply appreciative of Sally Kempton's Meditation for the Love of It (I discovered Sally Kempton through an angry, articulate article she wrote for Esquire decades ago) and Rod Stryker's The Four Desires. I'm reading The Emperor of All Maladies but not far enough into it to call it best, though it was on many top-ten lists. In books, as with movies, I'm not really on top of the newest releases, though my wish list is loooooong.
Best surgical and ICU team: The renegade cowboy magician heart surgeon and his team at Johns Hopkins who got my brother through a harrowing open-heart surgery that nearly went terribly wrong. Fortunately, the beat goes on, as bro says, and I got to see him get a wonderful award for his inspiring work in Baltimore in September, surrounded by his fans and friends. Heart, indeed.
Best music: Steve Conn's Beautiful Dream album, East Village Opera Company's version of The Flower Duet, and my late discovery of Neko Case. I also love the new Gillian Welch and Paul Simon records.
Best self-improvement strategy: Be friendly to yourself but disciplined. This unassuming little mantra helped me lose 15 pounds, pay off my credit cards, and do what I needed to do. In 2012 I intend to use it to help me make a lot more art.
Rest in peace: Whew. I didn't lose anyone in my immediate circle this year but the mystery and finality of death was a sad thread woven through the year. Many of my friends lost parents; you don't know how that feels until it happens to you, grief is not a linear process, and if you had a tough or complex relationship (or even if it was perfect), it can take years to reconcile your feelings. My dear friend and colleague Rebecca and her husband were very close to Chris Hondros, and his loss was wrenching and profound. I was one of those who was affected by the death of Steve Jobs. The Buddhists tell us that our job is to joyfully participate in the sorrows of life. These were sorrows indeed, and yes, there's no choice but to waltz with death and offer it a drink.
Best meal: I'm not too interested in trendy restaurants; I like good, nourishing food in warm settings with lively conversation. Some friends happened to be in Paris on the same Saturday night that I was there. We had a simple, relaxed meal at a bistro near my hotel in the Marais district, then walked over to Ile Saint-Louis for ice cream and the gargoyles of Notre Dame in the moonlight. Sweet and smart companions in the perfect place on a warm spring night as April finished and May began. Also: any meal that my dear friend Lisa makes for me.
Best travel: Sorry to be redundant, but I left my heart in Paris, and if the fates are kind, I'll go back often. Remembering those spring days is going to get me through this winter. Chicago in March and Lincoln in May were special, too, for the people I saw and got to spend precious time with.
Best art I saw in person: The Denver Art Museum had a small, exhilarating gem of an exhibition of contemporary American landscape. Seeing the magnificent Monet waterlilies in France choked me up, but this small show of landscapes made me want to get to work.
Best class: The botanical illustration program at the Denver Botanic Gardens is fantastic. I took the basic prerequisite class (Pencil 1) and loved it. If you live more than 100 miles away, you can take online classes; I don't, but I live and work too far away to get there easily, so I am trying to figure out how to take more of the enticing offerings for 2012.
Best community: Slow Cloth, of course. A word about Facebook, though; if you're not already on it, I don't think I can recommend starting now. With each change - and they are frequent - it's more difficult to find and access the connections you want and more just an enormous advertising and promotion field.
Best Saturday morning at an outdoor market: An early autumn morning at the Fell's Point Market in Baltimore with Sonya, Glenda, and Carolyn, the amazing ladies that make Farm Aid happen. It was just a lovely moment in time with lovely people.
Best textile experience: ISEND 2011, without a doubt. I'm grateful for the grant I received from the Textile Society of America to attend. It was a terrific conference and an incredibly valuable experience. I got to meet Alison, Jane, Nicole, Maggie, and so many other people who are working, thinking, creating, delighting in all that is so magnetic and compelling about fibers and fabric, dye and stitch. I got in some trouble for critiquing some of the conference logistics online, and I'm sorry that my comments hurt the organizers, because it was truly a wonderful event and well worth attending in every way.
Best purchase: My easel.
Best causes: Among many excellent nonprofits, I like Vitamin Angel, The Sewing Machine Project, Women for Women International, Farmer-Veteran Coalition, and my local Community Food Share. There are so many worthwhile causes and so many people in need -- give a little when you can.
Best blog discovery: I have a big nerd crush on the Head Butler.
Best co-workers: I work with amazing, kind, creative, resourceful, interesting, patient people. Thank you.
Best reader: you. Thank you for being here despite all evidence that I'd abandoned you. I'm not making big blog promises for 2012, but we'll see; I do love to write and I love the connections it offers. I plan to write my 2012 intentions next week, so we'll see what comes out of them.
Absolutely everyone who is interested in art, culture, and the human condition should see Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It's extraordinary. And then go and read "First Impressions," the 2008 Judith Thurman article in the New Yorker that influenced Werner Herzog to make the film. You can rent Cave of Forgotten Dreams on iTunes and, I assume, on other film rental sites, though if you can see it in 3D in a theater, it's probably well worth the effort. I watched it on my 13-inch computer screen and it was powerful and beautiful and completely intriguing--right down to the Werner Herzog signature strangeness in the postscript.
If you haven't heard of it, the film documents the images in Chauvet Cave in France, made perhaps 30,000 years ago; they are magical and graceful and seem effortless. There's been a lot of talk among archaelogists, cultural anthropologists, and art historians about what this means. Did the skill to make artistic images evolve, or, as these images suggest, simply appear? Thurman draws fascinating connections between images in contemporary shamanic ritual and the images in the cave, especially when humans are in motion before them. You simply can't help but be entranced by the mystical possibilities and the human connection to these most ancient of ancestors.
An image from the walls of Chauvet Cave.
Edited to add: Today, as it happens, is Werner Herzog's birthday, so celebrate his brilliance by watching this film. You can also listen to him read Go the Fuck to Sleep, because it's awesome.
First, over on Facebook, I finally launched a regular FB page for the Slow Cloth community. Please take a look and migrate over, if you're currently in the FB Slow Cloth group -- and if you're not, please visit the new page and consider giving it a Like. I've had trepidation about this but, you know, go medium-size or go home. Facebook's changes to the group format were not good, and there was no getting around that. So we'll see what happens. I'd still like to launch a web site separate from Facebook, but honestly, I have a lot of competing priorities these days. In any case, I'm observing a lot of burgeoning activity in the textile world lately; new magazines, for example - some I think will be very good, others not so much.
As I mentioned in the last post, there are many people in many fields adopting the "slow" descriptive. I think in general that's good, though I worry that slow will be the new green - essentially meaningless and devolving into a marketing term. I'm glad I attempted to give Slow Cloth a thorough definition in this blog.
A few years later, looking back on what I wrote, the idea of sustainability and environmental and social ethics needs more emphasis. The world is in very bad shape, and textile artists and entrepreneurs should be leaders in embracing an agenda of social change, even if you start small. If you've never bought a certified organic fabric or yarn, why not buy just one yard this year (I especially like Harmony Art fabrics) or skein? Make a small donation to The Sewing Machine Project or buy something from BaBa Blanket or Coleccion Luna, or give to Women for Women International. Teach someone to sew.
One of the values of Slow Cloth is the idea of striving for mastery. There's no shame at all in being a beginner, but I sometimes think we're losing the idea of getting better at something. And from my long-in-the-teeth perspective, I can tell you that it might take a lifetime to get even a little better at anything that matters -- loving someone, sewing clothes, traveling well, weaving, calligraphy, designing textiles, practicing yoga, treating people with kindness, knowing when to be silent and when to speak up. I came across this very good article on mastery and why it matters today, at a site called Accidental Creative.
I started an introductory class in botanical illustration this week. The Denver Botanic Gardens has a good program. I'm not sure why this particular discipline appeals to me so much right now, but it's partly because it asks you to work at it. We drew for five hours yesterday, basic beginning drawing stuff, but in a rigorous way.
It was so refreshing. In a world where too many amateurs are proclaiming themselves experts (as writers, artists, editors, curators, politicians, whatever) without paying any dues at all, or ever learning any real skills, it's time to reclaim the idea of improvement (I can hear my astrologer friends saying, yep, must be Virgo season). And though botanical art can become very expressive, like many textile traditions, it's coloring inside the lines -- there's a right way to do it. I think that the discipline of carefully observing nature is going to serve me well in the other things that I do. And last but not least, it's nice to go do something where no computer or Internet is involved, at least historically, and the gardens are a very beautiful place to visit in the late Colorado summer.
So, onward we go into September. What would you like to improve or even master, in yourself or the world?
Photographs of plants at the Denver Botanic Gardens by Elaine Lipson.
Here's a nice piece on Slow Cloth and natural dyeing from Jeannine Roediger in Van Wert, Ohio. Thank you, Jeannine, for including me. Quite a few textile-related people and groups are attaching "slow" to their names now, and they're not all the same; I think in general this trend is good, though to be honest, I like my definition. It's probably due for a review and some streamlining but it is still more complete than anyone else's, and has stood up pretty well for the past four years. Time to do more with it - I know I've been threatening that for a while.
It's the end of August - oh my. I'm taking this week off from what has been an incredibly busy and challenging few months at work--mostly I came home exhausted and perhaps with a bad case of decision fatigue--and my list of things to do is long. It includes finally launching a new blog on Wordpress and moving my Slow Cloth Facebook group page to a regular community page, which only means anything if you're on Facebook. Facebook generates as much frustration as connection, unfortunately, with its constant changes, privacy issues, and propensity toward self-promotion, but there you have it.They "upgraded" the group format and in the process took away all of our lovely and thoughtful discussion threads; those all just disappeared, and damn, that's a shame. There were wonderful ideas and thoughts in those discussions.
Speaking of online communities, Jaron Lanier wrote You Are Not a Gadget a few years ago and I highly recommend it. It's not an easy book to read, but his concept of digital humanism is profoundly important, I think. He's in favor of the expert (the artist, author, editor, curator, writer) rather than the crowdsourced, lowest-common-denominator way of creating content and making creative decisions. He's in favor of names rather than anonymity, to limit the venom that's all too ubiquitous on the web. He's in favor of decisions that create options instead of limit them. I'm still reading it, but I do recommend it highly if you're online and looking for an understanding of how online communities operate, and even a code of ethics for your online work.
More update soon. Thank you for still being here! I'm trying to catch up, I really am.
What is there to say about Paris? I only had two days there, but it took me a few decades to get there and it was everything I wanted it to be. In my imagination, Paris was always my city; the city of light, art, perfume, flowers, sex, couture, romance, beauty, Bohemian brilliance, moody existentialism, sensuality. And now, I can truly say that it's my city in my heart too.
I left La Rochelle on the last day of April on a 5:47 a.m. train that arrived at Gare Montparnasse about 9 a.m. I stopped for a quick café allongé - I'm not an espresso drinker even if that brands me as a soulless American - and took a taxi to my lovely little hotel in the Marais near the Place des Vosges. The Hotel Jeanne d'Arc is a budget hotel, without a doubt, not fancy, but if budget is what you need, it's ideal. It's simple, a little funky, very clean, full of people from everywhere, with a super-friendly and helpful staff. It's on a side street in a perfect location; out the door, turn the corner, you're in a square full of charming Paris shops and cafés, blocks from the river Seine and a bridge that will take you to the Ile Saint-Louis and from there to the Ile de la Cité or the Left Bank.
There's only one way to see a new city, in my opinion, and that's on foot. I spent the rest of the morning walking west along the river as the bouquinestes were opening their lockboxes and setting up their wares; in less than an hour I was at the Louvre, which I bypassed for another time. I got lunch and walked through the Tuileries to the Musée de l'Orangerie. Knowing that Sunday would be a holiday with everything closed, this was the one museum I had my heart set on seeing. This is the museum -- once storage for the gardens' landscapers -- with rooms specially built for eight of Monet's waterlily murals, the great masterworks of his late, cataract-ridden years. Music composed just for these rooms plays constantly, and visitors are asked to be silent; it feels like church.
Those paintings in those rooms had me near tears, I was so moved by them. Despite the colors that look so peaceful to us, there's a driven quality. They have a sweeping beauty and urgency that seems equal parts ego and inadequacy--or you could call it a powerful expression of the human condition, knowing that time is short, wanting to accomplish something big, something meaningful and lasting. And Monet did.
I took the long walk back to my hotel down the touristy Rue de Rivoli, with detours along the way. To my great delight, my friends Donna and Wendy were both in Paris that night as well, so we had a leisurely, wonderful dinner at a restaurant on Rue de Jarente. Then we walked through the city for ice cream and the night views of Notre Dame, taking Donna back to her apartment in the Latin Quarter.
Sunday -- May Day -- was as gorgeous a spring day as you could imagine or ask for. With all the museums closed, I walked for miles, through gardens and churches and squares and cobblestone streets of fascinating and tempting boutiques and parfumeries and bookstores. I had the most delicious falafel for dinner at Mi-Va-Mi on Rue des Rosiers, then a final ice cream at Berthillon.
On Monday I woke up to American news of American wars and the death of Osama Bin Laden. I walked to Gare de Lyon, took the bus to the airport for a slightly edgy flight, thinking about the long decade since 9/11 (when I was also in an airport), thinking about this crazy world, and headed home.
I had a notion that I'd post every day from the ISEND conference, but the combination of jet lag and sometimes limited internet connectivity--along with, well, being in France and wanting to be out on the lovely streets and in the cafes--spelled failure for that. So I'm sitting here today ready to write, but realizing that I left all my conference materials at my office yesterday, and that I should probably write my posts for the Textile Society of America, which gave me a grant to attend the conference, the Surface Design Association blog, and a couple of other promised pieces before I post too many details or photographs here. So for now, I'll just say a little.
It was a wonderful conference, and it was so cool that a few people recognized me as the "Slow Cloth lady." I met some textilian friends who were inspiring and delightful, including:
Nicole Rode, a textile conservator from the British Museum
Sasha Duerr of Permacouture, whom I'd corresponded with but never met;
...and more.
In brief, the natural dye community is an impressive global group of people who are searching for the next steps to keep natural dyeing alive, to find new ways to work with dye plants, share information, and keep natural dyeing viable as art, craft, and industry. Many are working with indigenous communities; others are working as solo artists and entrepreneurs; still others are focused on the science and chemistry of dye plants. While anything like a formalized global trade organization is still to come, there is so much passion, interest, and creativity in dye plants, whether for textiles, food, or cosmetics, that I have no doubt that almost anything is possible.
There are existing models, full of both successes and challenges, where things that once seemed anachronistic have been transformed into a contemporary movement and even to mainstream acceptance; the organic foods movement comes to mind. So it'll be fascinating to see where this can go, as long as the many diverse constituents can aim for consensus and sustainable growth.
More on ISEND to come.
Dye plants and fabrics above are from the exhibition stand of Coleurs de Plantes, a company in France that's developing and standardizing natural dyes for industry.
After leaving La Rochelle, I had two glorious days in Paris. If you'd like to see some of my pictures, they're on my Flickr page. I'll write more about Paris shortly.
